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My experience has been that people living next to newly constructed solar farms are unhappy about living next to a solar farm. It is also my experience that thi

My experience has been that people living next to newly constructed solar farms are unhappy about living next to a solar farm. It is also my experience that this is a fringe opinion because a very low percentage of people live next to solar farms.

squigz 1y ago
"My experience is that people whose homes have burned down are unhappy that their homes burned down. It is also my experience that this is a fringe opinion" Like what?
- nemomarx 1y ago
  Is a solar farm being built nearby as bad as your house burning down? I didn't think the property value would change that drastically...
  - squigz 1y ago
    No, but I was trying to illustrate the absurdity of dismissing these as 'fringe' opinions, simply because they only apply to the segment of the population that are actually going through it.
- trimethylpurine 1y ago
  Seeing them feels dystopian. I actually don't think that opinion is so fringe. There were lots of environmental protesters when the solar farm near us went up. The valley was rich in low shrubs and wildlife, and even some forest was leveled. A multi billion dollar energy company destroyed it to pick up their share of the free government funding while powering less than 2% of homes. Sure, it's better than a gas refinery or some other things you could find yourself living next to. But let's not ignore what's bad about our current solutions.
  - physicles 1y ago
    What do you propose instead?
    - trimethylpurine 1y ago
      I didn't. It looks like GP changed their comment. I was answering the question of what people don't like about living next to a solar farm.
    - mgerdts 1y ago
      Get rid of the ethanol mandate. Replace those acres of corn with solar panels and an understory of native plants. One likely biased source I read a while back said that about 1/3 of this land would be sufficient to power all the cars and trucks in the US if they were all EVs.
  - chasd00 1y ago
    Seeing a big solar farm out in the desert does feel cyverpunk’esque/dystopian in a way. I suppose it’s the juxtaposition of new technology with the harsh natural beauty of a desert.
    - dralley 1y ago
      Agriculture in the desert is awe inspiring in the opposite way, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
      - trimethylpurine 1y ago
        Not all deserts are sand dunes. Many are very rich in plant and animal life and can be excellent for certain crops, given some basic irrigation. A great many are in cold climates. If you saw what they call a desert when there's money on the table, I would venture to guess you'd side with the environmental groups that opposed the location I was referring to. I have no doubt. What I mean is that solar is good, and I support using it in a lot of places. But it's also open to bad decisions like everything else, so I try not to be a zealot about it. It's not the end all perfect cure for energy and it doesn't save the environment in all cases. Just in many.
- andrew_mason1 1y ago
  are the homes that were burned down by solar farms in the room with us right now?
bfkwlfkjf 1y ago
Would you like to share with us what it is they say makes them unhappy about it specifically?
ourmandave 1y ago
I had to google it and apparently the complaints are: Ruin the view, Lower property values, Habitat destruction, Noise from inverter fans
- bob1029 1y ago
  > Noise from inverter fans Not just the fans. The transformers, inductors, chokes, capacitors, etc can get extremely noisy as well. I have to plug my ears when I walk by the switchgear at my local Walmart's EV install because it is so loud. Any system that relies on high rate of change of current over time is prone to these issues. Look at the prevalence of coil whine in gaming PCs and workstations now. The level of noise scales almost linearly with current up until you saturate the various magnetic cores. In a multi-megawatt installation of any kind that relies upon inverters, it is plausible that these electromagnetic acoustic effects could cause meaningful habitat destruction on their own. Traditional synchronous machines (turbines) do not have this issue, but they are not something you want to live next to for reasons on the other end of the acoustic frequency spectrum. Infrasound from a turbine can travel for miles, especially during transient phases of operation. There were a lot of complaints on social media during the commissioning of a new natural gas generator unit in my area last year.
  - jayd16 1y ago
    So bury them? Is that not feasible for some reason?
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Inverter coil whine is high-pitched, so it gets attenuated nearly instantly. Fan noise gets absorbed into the background just as the wind noise does. I was on many solar farms, and the only ones that I could hear from the distance were the ones that had classic substations nearby. The 60Hz transformer sound can be heard for quite a distance.
- cyberax 1y ago
  > Noise from inverter fans Please. You won't hear it even a couple hundred meters away. As for habitat destruction, wildlife _loves_ the shade under solar panels. So much that you need to be careful where you step because rattlesnakes also love (to eat) the wildlife. Moreover, unlike mines and coal power plants, solar plants are mostly build-and-forget installations. They can be completely unmanned, with only occasional visits for maintenance and panel cleaning.
UltraSane 1y ago
I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there silently.
- AlfeG 1y ago
  Because they are not silent. Or sometimes are not. Inverters do have quite large fans.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    Compared to literally every other way of generating power, they are relatively silent and unobtrusive. They also don’t poison the air around them which is pretty neat.
    - mauvehaus 1y ago
      Yes, but the relevant comparison for the residents isn't to a coal plant, it's to the undeveloped field that the solar arrays replaced. Depending upon their other priorities, they may be upset about the loss of hunting access as well. Understandably, people putting up solar arrays don't want people firing guns in the middle of their arrays.
      - Forgeties79 1y ago
        We have to make power somehow and they all want to use said power. It mostly just boils down to nimbyism at the end of the day. They are just unaware of (or don’t care about) areas like cancer alley where we dump all our mining/refining/processing/etc. in an already impoverished area that can’t push back the same way wealthy neighborhoods with social status can.
        Spivak 1y ago
        > and they all want to use said power If I were to hazard a guess every person complaining would happily suffer the 'consequences' of a solar farm not being near their neighborhood. It really should be a no brainer compromise to zone solar as industrial so they're not near where people live. There's in practice infinite amounts of land you can get zoned like this. Living to electrical noise sucks in a way living need next to a wind farm doesn't.
cainxinth 1y ago
Who enjoys living next to a power plant of any kind?
- jstanley 1y ago
  Of all the kinds of power plant, a solar farm has to be the least intrusive.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Nuclear is a good candidate - they take up a lot less land mass for the amount of power generated. I used to leave near one, and when my neighbors where asked where it was most pointed instead to a coal power plant many miles away.
    - MisterTea 1y ago
      I mean sure, nuclear is very interesting but the cost right now is so sky high vs renewable that it's a massive uphill battle to even consider it. Then factor in the negative public perception and waste disposal issues and that hill you have to fight up just became a vertical wall. Solar and wind are low cost and high return. Maybe one day it will make sense but today it does not.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        The plant I'm talking about was built in the 1950s though. I wouldn't build a new one today for the reasons you state, but having lived near one I'd do it again.
    - wingworks 1y ago
      In theory I wouldn't mind living next to nuclear. I say in theory, because we've seen too many times when someone cuts corners, or has deadlines or poorly trained staff on site, that when things go wrong, they can sometimes go very very wrong.
      - 1y ago
IAmBroom 1y ago
Having farmers in the family, I can confirm they are unhappy about living next to anything other than what they grew up next to. Also, the rainfall. Some farmers go from morning to night never saying a word that isn't a complaint about the rainfall being wrong.
- ellisv 1y ago
  > Also, the rainfall. Some farmers go from morning to night never saying a word that isn't a complaint about the rainfall being wrong. Yes. Some of them use proper rain gauges but some just complain about it. Basically none of them understand the difference between a point measurement and an areal average estimate.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Farmers will always have reason to complain about rain. Farmers need rain, but there is never a perfect time for it to rain. There is always something they need to do that can't be done because it rained. If rain was 100% predictable months in advance farmers would just plan to not do those things on rain days (rain days often last a couple days because things need to dry), but it isn't and so they often are in the middle of something that cannot be interrupted when rain interrupts them. Of course the other problem is sometimes it doesn't rain and then they can get all the jobs done above - but because there is no rain nothing grew (well) and so the harvests are bad...
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    > Some of them use proper rain gauges OOOhh is there a device I can get that tracks this for home?
    - amundskm 1y ago
      Easiest thing in the world, put a cup outside: https://www.zoro.com/acurite-rain-gauge-magnifying-12-12-in-h-00850a3/i/G4145251/ https://www.zoro.com/acurite-rain-gauge-magnifying-12-12-in-...
- 1y ago
VoodooJuJu 1y ago
[dead]
pjc50 1y ago
People object to any construction whatsoever.
scarecrowbob 1y ago
I'm quite happy to live next to a 4kw "farm" because without it I would have had to run a $25k easement to get power to the property where i live. I'm less than $8k in on the solar part of this and it's been more reliable than my neighbor's grid power. But maybe my enjoyment of the panel set is also a "fringe" opinion. I know folks that live near larger installations with less direct impacts and they seem to have fewer feelings about those plants.
mhb 1y ago
Didn't Schelling have the answer to this?
RALaBarge 1y ago
I come from rural Michigan and everyone in the areas where the turbines are complain about it. Its the view or its the sound. The former sure, the latter I haven't heard it myself but I don't go home anymore. It is also the only new investments made in the area in 50 years in any which way shape or form. When they first started, they had to build the infrastructure and stations to collect the power to transport it from the turbines. My mom rented out some rooms of her house to make some cash when that went on for maybe 2 years in total. There was a lot of work and money coming into the area for a moment, but now the only people making money are the farmers who own the land the turbines sit on. It's always a trip to see a view you have seen for 40 years but with the turbines there in the background. Slowly, these rural areas are losing vital services one by one. The specialists stop coming to the hospital, even on rotation. The dentists and optometrists retire out and unless someone growing up there has a passion for teeth and genetically modified corn then the roles get pushed out to the bigger cities, 30-45m away.
- deleted 1y ago
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- deleted 1y ago
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- justin66 1y ago
  I wonder if the noise becomes a lesser concern once the turbines reach a certain size? I was in Iowa a couple of years ago and the sight of the turbines near the freeway was truly something, but I don't think I could hear them when I stopped to take a look.
  - user____name 1y ago
    I think it's just fud and nimbyism, I live very near a bunch of large windmills and I cannot hear them at all.
  - michael1999 1y ago
    The big ones can be really loud. As the blades get longer, tip speed becomes truly impressive.

squigz 1y ago

"My experience is that people whose homes have burned down are unhappy that their homes burned down. It is also my experience that this is a fringe opinion" Like what?

nemomarx 1y ago
Is a solar farm being built nearby as bad as your house burning down? I didn't think the property value would change that drastically...
- squigz 1y ago
  No, but I was trying to illustrate the absurdity of dismissing these as 'fringe' opinions, simply because they only apply to the segment of the population that are actually going through it.
trimethylpurine 1y ago
Seeing them feels dystopian. I actually don't think that opinion is so fringe. There were lots of environmental protesters when the solar farm near us went up. The valley was rich in low shrubs and wildlife, and even some forest was leveled. A multi billion dollar energy company destroyed it to pick up their share of the free government funding while powering less than 2% of homes. Sure, it's better than a gas refinery or some other things you could find yourself living next to. But let's not ignore what's bad about our current solutions.
- physicles 1y ago
  What do you propose instead?
  - trimethylpurine 1y ago
    I didn't. It looks like GP changed their comment. I was answering the question of what people don't like about living next to a solar farm.
  - mgerdts 1y ago
    Get rid of the ethanol mandate. Replace those acres of corn with solar panels and an understory of native plants. One likely biased source I read a while back said that about 1/3 of this land would be sufficient to power all the cars and trucks in the US if they were all EVs.
- chasd00 1y ago
  Seeing a big solar farm out in the desert does feel cyverpunk’esque/dystopian in a way. I suppose it’s the juxtaposition of new technology with the harsh natural beauty of a desert.
  - dralley 1y ago
    Agriculture in the desert is awe inspiring in the opposite way, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
    - trimethylpurine 1y ago
      Not all deserts are sand dunes. Many are very rich in plant and animal life and can be excellent for certain crops, given some basic irrigation. A great many are in cold climates. If you saw what they call a desert when there's money on the table, I would venture to guess you'd side with the environmental groups that opposed the location I was referring to. I have no doubt. What I mean is that solar is good, and I support using it in a lot of places. But it's also open to bad decisions like everything else, so I try not to be a zealot about it. It's not the end all perfect cure for energy and it doesn't save the environment in all cases. Just in many.
andrew_mason1 1y ago
are the homes that were burned down by solar farms in the room with us right now?

bfkwlfkjf 1y ago

Would you like to share with us what it is they say makes them unhappy about it specifically?

ourmandave 1y ago

I had to google it and apparently the complaints are: Ruin the view, Lower property values, Habitat destruction, Noise from inverter fans

bob1029 1y ago
> Noise from inverter fans Not just the fans. The transformers, inductors, chokes, capacitors, etc can get extremely noisy as well. I have to plug my ears when I walk by the switchgear at my local Walmart's EV install because it is so loud. Any system that relies on high rate of change of current over time is prone to these issues. Look at the prevalence of coil whine in gaming PCs and workstations now. The level of noise scales almost linearly with current up until you saturate the various magnetic cores. In a multi-megawatt installation of any kind that relies upon inverters, it is plausible that these electromagnetic acoustic effects could cause meaningful habitat destruction on their own. Traditional synchronous machines (turbines) do not have this issue, but they are not something you want to live next to for reasons on the other end of the acoustic frequency spectrum. Infrasound from a turbine can travel for miles, especially during transient phases of operation. There were a lot of complaints on social media during the commissioning of a new natural gas generator unit in my area last year.
- jayd16 1y ago
  So bury them? Is that not feasible for some reason?
- cyberax 1y ago
  Inverter coil whine is high-pitched, so it gets attenuated nearly instantly. Fan noise gets absorbed into the background just as the wind noise does. I was on many solar farms, and the only ones that I could hear from the distance were the ones that had classic substations nearby. The 60Hz transformer sound can be heard for quite a distance.
cyberax 1y ago
> Noise from inverter fans Please. You won't hear it even a couple hundred meters away. As for habitat destruction, wildlife _loves_ the shade under solar panels. So much that you need to be careful where you step because rattlesnakes also love (to eat) the wildlife. Moreover, unlike mines and coal power plants, solar plants are mostly build-and-forget installations. They can be completely unmanned, with only occasional visits for maintenance and panel cleaning.

UltraSane 1y ago

I can understand not wanting to live close to wind turbines but I don't understand the issue with living next to a solar farm since the panels just sit there silently.

AlfeG 1y ago
Because they are not silent. Or sometimes are not. Inverters do have quite large fans.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  Compared to literally every other way of generating power, they are relatively silent and unobtrusive. They also don’t poison the air around them which is pretty neat.
  - mauvehaus 1y ago
    Yes, but the relevant comparison for the residents isn't to a coal plant, it's to the undeveloped field that the solar arrays replaced. Depending upon their other priorities, they may be upset about the loss of hunting access as well. Understandably, people putting up solar arrays don't want people firing guns in the middle of their arrays.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      We have to make power somehow and they all want to use said power. It mostly just boils down to nimbyism at the end of the day. They are just unaware of (or don’t care about) areas like cancer alley where we dump all our mining/refining/processing/etc. in an already impoverished area that can’t push back the same way wealthy neighborhoods with social status can.
      - Spivak 1y ago
        > and they all want to use said power If I were to hazard a guess every person complaining would happily suffer the 'consequences' of a solar farm not being near their neighborhood. It really should be a no brainer compromise to zone solar as industrial so they're not near where people live. There's in practice infinite amounts of land you can get zoned like this. Living to electrical noise sucks in a way living need next to a wind farm doesn't.

cainxinth 1y ago

Who enjoys living next to a power plant of any kind?

jstanley 1y ago
Of all the kinds of power plant, a solar farm has to be the least intrusive.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Nuclear is a good candidate - they take up a lot less land mass for the amount of power generated. I used to leave near one, and when my neighbors where asked where it was most pointed instead to a coal power plant many miles away.
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    I mean sure, nuclear is very interesting but the cost right now is so sky high vs renewable that it's a massive uphill battle to even consider it. Then factor in the negative public perception and waste disposal issues and that hill you have to fight up just became a vertical wall. Solar and wind are low cost and high return. Maybe one day it will make sense but today it does not.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      The plant I'm talking about was built in the 1950s though. I wouldn't build a new one today for the reasons you state, but having lived near one I'd do it again.
  - wingworks 1y ago
    In theory I wouldn't mind living next to nuclear. I say in theory, because we've seen too many times when someone cuts corners, or has deadlines or poorly trained staff on site, that when things go wrong, they can sometimes go very very wrong.
    - 1y ago

IAmBroom 1y ago

Having farmers in the family, I can confirm they are unhappy about living next to anything other than what they grew up next to. Also, the rainfall. Some farmers go from morning to night never saying a word that isn't a complaint about the rainfall being wrong.

ellisv 1y ago
> Also, the rainfall. Some farmers go from morning to night never saying a word that isn't a complaint about the rainfall being wrong. Yes. Some of them use proper rain gauges but some just complain about it. Basically none of them understand the difference between a point measurement and an areal average estimate.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Farmers will always have reason to complain about rain. Farmers need rain, but there is never a perfect time for it to rain. There is always something they need to do that can't be done because it rained. If rain was 100% predictable months in advance farmers would just plan to not do those things on rain days (rain days often last a couple days because things need to dry), but it isn't and so they often are in the middle of something that cannot be interrupted when rain interrupts them. Of course the other problem is sometimes it doesn't rain and then they can get all the jobs done above - but because there is no rain nothing grew (well) and so the harvests are bad...
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  > Some of them use proper rain gauges OOOhh is there a device I can get that tracks this for home?
  - amundskm 1y ago
    Easiest thing in the world, put a cup outside: https://www.zoro.com/acurite-rain-gauge-magnifying-12-12-in-h-00850a3/i/G4145251/ https://www.zoro.com/acurite-rain-gauge-magnifying-12-12-in-...
1y ago

VoodooJuJu 1y ago

[dead]

pjc50 1y ago

People object to any construction whatsoever.

scarecrowbob 1y ago

I'm quite happy to live next to a 4kw "farm" because without it I would have had to run a $25k easement to get power to the property where i live. I'm less than $8k in on the solar part of this and it's been more reliable than my neighbor's grid power. But maybe my enjoyment of the panel set is also a "fringe" opinion. I know folks that live near larger installations with less direct impacts and they seem to have fewer feelings about those plants.

mhb 1y ago

Didn't Schelling have the answer to this?

RALaBarge 1y ago

I come from rural Michigan and everyone in the areas where the turbines are complain about it. Its the view or its the sound. The former sure, the latter I haven't heard it myself but I don't go home anymore. It is also the only new investments made in the area in 50 years in any which way shape or form. When they first started, they had to build the infrastructure and stations to collect the power to transport it from the turbines. My mom rented out some rooms of her house to make some cash when that went on for maybe 2 years in total. There was a lot of work and money coming into the area for a moment, but now the only people making money are the farmers who own the land the turbines sit on. It's always a trip to see a view you have seen for 40 years but with the turbines there in the background. Slowly, these rural areas are losing vital services one by one. The specialists stop coming to the hospital, even on rotation. The dentists and optometrists retire out and unless someone growing up there has a passion for teeth and genetically modified corn then the roles get pushed out to the bigger cities, 30-45m away.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
justin66 1y ago
I wonder if the noise becomes a lesser concern once the turbines reach a certain size? I was in Iowa a couple of years ago and the sight of the turbines near the freeway was truly something, but I don't think I could hear them when I stopped to take a look.
- user____name 1y ago
  I think it's just fud and nimbyism, I live very near a bunch of large windmills and I cannot hear them at all.
- michael1999 1y ago
  The big ones can be really loud. As the blades get longer, tip speed becomes truly impressive.